As POC writers, how have you dealt
with like tokenism versus being a viable asset
in the publishing market?
Good question and a difficult one.
I think the thing about tokenism is it's something
that it's so hard.
I can't control that.
I can't control people's--
I think-- or their instinct or their decision to include.
And why they're doing that.
So I just kind of take things as they come and say what I will.
And use the space that I-- use the space to say what I think
is important when I get it.
And I try to always kind of use what platform
I have to call attention to what I think is important.
And also to call attention to other writers of color
that are doing amazing work.
To kind of-- if I'm in a situation where, you know,
where it's new--
where that information would be new to introduce
the idea that there's more than one of us.
There are so many.
And to make that clear to people.
I had a conversation once with a woman
at a reading who was like, it's like these new writers of color
just they've come out of nowhere.
And I was like, not really actually.
So I think just like taking whatever opportunity
I can to amplify other voices who are doing work.
I think that's kind of all I can really
do from the position of the writer.
Yeah
Yeah, that's a very important question, and you know,
Camille hit it on the head.
I think, for myself, we can't control the ignorance of others
and the irresponsibility of others.
You know, I think, when I think of myself as a writer,
I have to think of where am I at my best?
And I can't exhaust myself tending to ignorance.
And so my agency as an artist is to not see or concern myself
necessarily with the blindness and the shortfalls
of uncreative thinking.
But rather, see my community.
And so I think, in that sense, there's
urgency in making the work.
And for me, it's not without its terrors and fears
in being misunderstood, misseen, misheard.
But I think the urgency to speak, as a community,
to the things that are important to me, that's--
that urgency outpaces the terror.
And I think that's how, for myself, the work gets done.
I see a question.
So Ocean, this is for both of you,
but addressing Ocean's "Ars Poetica."
In the body, everything has a price.
I wanted to know whether or not that is your body
or like, your collection of poetry.
Your body of work.
Or each poem as a body.
And what that connection means to you?
For myself, I think the body is very important.
And I think, especially as a writer of color,
I think often there's this interesting result
of publishing a book, is that publishing
a book is also in many ways a severance from the work
from the self, right?
Before our ancestors carried stories with us.
The Iliad was memorized and performed in its entirety.
And now there's this technology of printmaking.
And I think there are great advantages in beauty
in disseminating work and communicating with one another,
but there's also this danger of valuing the text,
perhaps even more than the body that created it.
And I think when we think about art, not only in writing,
but in music.
We think about the music of this country
and all of the people, different types of people,
different backgrounds, who've made the growth of a genre
or innovation possible.
I think it's very easy to erase them.
And so, for myself, the body is a central space.
And I don't want it to be so far removed from the text itself.
And I guess my question for myself
is what happens when the body has
to be considered inseparable from the work,
despite the severing of publication.
And so I think, for me, in order to achieve
that in the book itself, I have to keep calling attention
to the body.
That-- not only one body, but many bodies
made a life possible.
Made a life flourish and therefore the text possible.
Got time for one more if we've got another hand.
You both have such a-- thank you for that reading, first, that
was wonderful from each of you.
But you both have such distinctive styles.
Camille you're really-- you have these really direct,
short parsed sentences.
And Ocean you this kind of outpouring of attention.
For both of you, is that still something that you've been--
you developed over many, many years
or is that kind of where you started?
And where-- if you could trace where that came from?
Where did you-- where do you think that came from for you?
I guess I'll start.
No, I did not start there.
I started in high school and it wasn't pretty.
It was not pretty.
So no.
But I don't-- I think it's hard to kind of quantify how you
arrive at a voice in poetry.
I don't know--
I don't know how I got there you know, except that a part of it
is maybe just a part of the way that I think about poetry
and about how I form phrases?
You know, I think a lot in terms of sound and rhythms
and how things fit together.
And kind of, I think that's a part of why my words are
the way that they are.
There's a sort of sense of awareness of syncopation
and staccato and legato.
And like, I'm-- I have a musical background so I think
that's probably a part of it.
But a lot of it too is what I pick up
from reading and from my various varied influences in poetry
and writing.
And I listen to the radio a lot.
I like to hear stories and people's patterns of speech.
And all of that, I think, informs the way
that my voice is formed.
And it's a very difficult thing to pin down for me.
But I think that it's just whatever feels right
at the moment, you know?
And-- it was--
I mean, I think it is a long process.
I think it always to arrive at any poem.
And it's definitely not the way that I
write now is not the way that I was writing
10 or 15 years ago at all.
It's always kind of transforming and changing
depending on what feels right to me in the moment.
Yeah, thank you for that question.
Styles, I think, the idea of style to me
is very interesting.
I'm not so concerned with having a style.
I'm sure-- I think part of me believes
that we all have this voice that is as idiosyncratic as our DNA.
And by voice, I mean our obsessions,
what we return to, the way we think,
the strange beauty of it.
And so I would hope for myself, that if there
is a style, that it's one that is constantly in flux.
We think about arriving at a style.
And for myself, I think a style is perhaps
most useful is if I arrive at it,
I can quickly depart it to go elsewhere.
And I think that's why I go to art.
To unshackle myself.
And I think of poetry not so much as
whether it can be enough or even enoughness, but more
as what else can it hold?
Of a moreness.
So in that sense, I am suspicious of these notions
of what's your voice?
Having a voice.
Having a style.
Because then it starts to look like these similar
and very familiarly toxic modes of commodification, right?
Protection.
And it starts to look like a lot of the systems of capitalism
that has infiltrated creative thinking.
And so, for me, I would hope to keep
changing as much as possible.
Like for example, right now I'm writing prose.
It's scary.
It's new.
But I want to be surprised.
And-- but with that said, I think we all have a style.
Just the way we have a tone, right?
I can say anything, whether I'm praising,
or cursing, reading a poem, or reading a dictionary.
It's my one voice.
And so I think similarly, when it
comes to the style of writing, we all have it there.
Whether where we think so or not.
And I like to think that one's voice and style is already
fully possessed and it's just a matter of adding
and maneuvering within those spaces.
Thank you for those wonderful answers.
[APPLAUSE]